How we do Learning Weaving at The Systems Sanctuary

rachel sinha
Refuge for systems leaders
8 min readNov 4, 2022

by Rachel Sinha and Tatiana Fraser

Building Collective Intelligence

The spirit of The System Sanctuary is rooted in collective learning. We know from our experience that we don’t have systems change figured out and we also know that systems change journeys are emergent. They twist and turn, they ebb and flow, people become close companions and they sometimes move away. These initiatives rarely end up where you think they are going to end up.

Our publication summarizing key learnings from The Systems Sisterhood, a peer-learning program we ran for women working on systemic change and going through a life transition.

Building in learning throughout this nebulous journey is therefore a smart move. Systems Theory teaches us that we never hold the whole truth, that we just represent one perspective. We believe in the power of collective insight that comes through practice and doing.

Systems change initiatives are usually portfolio in nature. They are working in many places in the system at the same time to push for change — policy, changing narratives, supporting innovation and community healing. Our vision of learning creates a process that connects learning across an ecosystem so that we can see in new ways, make connections that haven’t been made and then use this insight to inform wiser action.

As we track the learning in the portfolio of projects we work on from human trafficking, to climate change to GBV to immigration,, we are able to weave learning together across our programs and projects. We look for the meta patterns that emerge from this tracking and tracing and we share this broadly and openly to inform the field.

Ecosystem weaving

We capture learning, not primarily for the purpose of evaluation, but for the purpose of strategy generation. As a core team you need to know what’s working, what’s not, what’s growing? The learning that is generated becomes an iterative feedback loop that inform next steps. You may need to also capture the most groundbreaking learning in your network to share this with the world, or work out the dynamics, the challenges, the opportunities in a given field of practice.

We typically accompany an ever-changing initiative, team or field of practice, over a long period of time.

We know learning is important, but how do you fit it in?

As a core team of a busy project, collective learning often falls off the to do list. Faced with an expanding portfolio of work, writing this down feels like a nice to have, never a need to have.

We at The Systems Sanctuary love to do this. We create a learning infrastructure, where we acknowledge the complexity of an initiative and build in a way to capture learning as it grows, morphs, changes, over time.

At what level?

We typically create learning infrastructure at three scales; at a team or ecosystem level, at a field level or as a meta collective inquiry which reaches beyond.

  1. Team level learning: Creating a regular space to learn together as a team about a given question on topic. We have been working with Ashoka Canada for two years exploring organizational DEI at a team level.
  2. Ecosystem level learning: This is the level of a systems change project. It is motivated by a collective of actors who are working to shift a system or an issue. In this context, learning facilitates collective sensemaking and is used to inform collective action. We have worked with CASE a project looking at Human Trafficking in Canada, tracking the learning around this ecosystem project for two years.
  3. Field level learning: We also work to support learning at a field level. We do this through Illuminate and feminist systems change field building. Both collaborations are looking to advance the field of systems change practice.
  4. Collective Inquiry: We see meta level trends that emerge from the multiple projects we work across. There is one theme that comes up over and over again, that we feel connected to and passionate about and a question bubbles up. In these cases we set out to learn about what this question means, what it points to, what work is being done to move this along, what are other people seeing. For us, collective inquiry intends to hone in on that question and to surface insights that can help move a systemic block, reframe an issue, connect disparate work etc. Examples for us have included the question of how care connects to multiple systems. In 2022, we co-led an inquiry into the intersections of care and systems change with the Turtle Island Institute and MakeWay. Our inquiry into the art of Scaling Deep for systems change is exploring practices and impacts with Ashoka Canada and we recently wrapped a two year inquiry into the role of Bridging in systems change, which we explored with a Cohort through Illuminate.

How?

To do this we use a combination of interviews, peer-learning and collaborative sense-making to support leaders to develop and strengthen their practice. Participants share the challenges they’re grappling with, we make sense together and we use this knowledge to help them to inform strategy and decision making. We use a very simple process.

Facilitate the learning

This is about getting some insight into the current strategies and status of a project or initiative or the main challenges people are facing at a certain time. We usually approach this through a two step process. First we do some interviews ourselves to get a somewhat biased snapshot of what’s going on. Then we create learning spaces where people can layer stories and experiences on top of those insights, to emerge new collective insights based together.

One-to-one interviews research

We do one to one interviews to get a range of perspectives, transcribing everything. Interviewing a set of 15 or so stakeholders who surround the issue or project. We ask open-ended questions about their experience, challenges and opportunities they see.

Through peer-learning circles

We create a cohort of up to 15 people who are focused on a given issue in a field of practice. We use peer-input method to hear from people one by one, about the challenges they are facing in their work over a long period of time (typically 8 months, once a month). We always the calls.

This allows a group to make sense together of their shared experience. Value is created for the people convened, as much as from the people who are convening. This helps us to move away from the extractive form of research that takes from community and doesn’t offer value in return.

The value of working in this way has become increasingly clear to us over the 5 years we have been hosting peer-learning circles. It becomes a way of connecting and deepening relationships across an ecosystem and it becomes a space to strengthen leadership, as people are given the space and time to step away and reflect. This approach grounds in the collective reality and surfaces learning from experiences. Resources are shared, insights are exchanged. Participants walk away with new ideas and possibilities.

Theme & pattern it out

We transcribe all of the sessions, and then we go back to identify the emerging questions, patterns and insights. We share this back with the participants and use this data to map into a systems change framework. This informs collective and individual actions and next steps.

We always use direct quotes from participants in our write up, for a number of reasons. Firstly, people are able to articulate the same thing in a range of interesting different ways. This allows us to pick up nuance in the language used and to avoid, to some extent, our own bias. We get to hear first voice by doing this and it is SO much more interesting than hearing our own tone of voice throughout the write up.

Summarize clearly and to the point

After this we do multiple things with the data, depending on the objectives for sharing. Sometimes we will show how these themes map onto a framework of systems change.

Working with Ashoka Canada, looking at their internal DEI we mapped out the challenges we identified at an individual, team and organizational level and shared that back with the team. We created a framework against which we could track progress over time. We then set quarterly learning and reflection sessions to track the individual and collective learning. This allows the team to make connections across their work, to anchor the learnings, to validate their successes and identify priorities for moving forward.

Working with CASE on Human Trafficking in Nova Scotia, we interviewed key stakeholders and mapped out the shared systemic challenges they faced in their work on the power shift framework. We use this as a baseline for evaluation purposes as well as for strategic decision making. This has been a really helpful tool for the team to gather feedback from partners and to adapt and pivot their strategy in a responsive and agile way.

For the Illuminate Funder node research, we simply listed the collective challenges faced and captured the key questions people were asking. This data helped us to hone in on the real needs of the stakeholders so that the Iluminate team could design a process that aligned with our values as well as ground in the depth of the work required by a funder node.

Thinking through how we share this is always part of a bigger discussion about why we’re sharing it in the first place. Inform strategic decision making? Illuminate key challenges shared at a field of practice level? To create a way of tracking progress over time?

Our approach

Our approach has certain principles underpinning it.

You are the expert in your own experience

We pride ourselves on our ability to listen deeply, to empower leaders to find solutions from their own experience, and on turning these insights into clear strategy. We share frameworks on systems change, meeting participants where they are at, to help them take the next wise step strategically.

An intersectional lens

Our work is grounded in an equity lens. We use a feminist frame which takes into account intersections of gender, race, class, ability and sexual identity. Practically this means centering the experience of people with lived experience, valuing different ways of knowing, creating the conditions to work across difference, prioritizing diverse experiences and inclusion, reflecting on power dynamics to understand challenges and opportunities and integrating learning for participants to advance understanding and action on equity.

Some examples

Much of this work is for internal purposes for clients, so can’t be shared publicly. But here are three examples of summary reports we’ve written weaving learning together.

Where does this come from?

Both Tatiana and Rachel (Co-Founders of The Systems Sanctuary) are trained in qualitative research methods. Rachel has a BA in Psychology and an MA in Marketing. Tatiana has been practicing adult education methods, participatory methodologies, and feminist praxis for thirty years. These methods challenge traditional notions of expertise and shift power from dominant hierarchical traditions to decentralized and collaborative practices. We have innovated and tweaked our training to meet the needs of the ecosystems, networks, organizations we work with.

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rachel sinha
Refuge for systems leaders

Co-Founder @SystemSanctuary and @TheFinanceLab, Alumni @THNK_org #systemschange for people and planet